MSI Geforce GTX 275 Lightning Video Card Review

The previous Lightning model based of a Geforce GTX 260 by MSI was a big success within the overclocking/gaming community. Can MSI pull it off again with the higher rated GTX 275? What did MSI change to declare this card the fastest GTX 275 out there? Only one way to find out: Let us explore the card and included software bit by bit.

MSI Lightning speeds and package

Card speeds and package

This card deviates from the reference design with the intention to create one of the, if not, THE fastest GTX 275 card out on the market. Not alone by adding more durable components and better cooling. MSI raised the GPU clock speeds to 700Mhz instead of the 633Mhz of the reference card. Yet they opted to not link the Shaders speed and keep them at the reference clock of 1404Mhz.(this for sure to avoid OC problems, shaders are the limiting factor there) Ram clocks however are deviating from the reference design of 1134Mhz. Here's a quick table for you

It has to be mentioned that the MSI card got the double amount of RAM onboard. 1792Mb of whopping DDR3 ram is at your disposal to be filled with luscious game textures. This might give this MSI card the edge at high resolutions compared to the reference 896Mb design card.

GPU-Z screenshot :

As you will notice the GPU-Z calculated specs differ from those of MSI themselves (used in the upper chart)

The box design is a rather love or loath it type. Some prefer almost scantly clad girls on the box, others prefer something else (we’ve yet to see a Chippendale VGA card ;-))

The package contains the following parts:

- The card itself of course, properly packed and protected- DVI to Analogue adapter- HDMI adapter and HDMI cable- SPDIF audio cable- PCI Express power cable- Manual, a quick installation guide- 2 cables to allow readouts for the voltages via a Digital Multimeter- Driver CD and the Afterburner CD (more on that on the next page)